Elaine Kalman Naves

Writing

Inspired in large part by her family’s immigration from Hungary when she was still a child, Elaine Kalman Naves’ broad body of work plumbs the multicultural complexities of Montreal, the city that she has embraced as home. A writer, journalist, and broadcaster whose endeavours reach back two decades, Naves has authored several books that explore the Hungarian-Jewish experience, beginning with Journey to Vaja: Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family (1996), which won the Elie Wiesel Prize. A notable documenter of Montreal immigrant writing, her 1998 book, Putting Down Roots: Montreal’s Immigrant Writers, garnered the Quebec Writers’ Federation Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction and expanded on the work she began with The Writers of Montreal (1993) and continued in Storied Streets: Montreal in the Literary Imagination, co-written with Bryan Demchinsky (2000).  Naves is a frequent contributor to the CBC Radio program Ideas. (DN)

Shoshanna's Story, 2003